Varvara and Flex are western grays, an endangered species of only 130 individuals worldwide. However, not all scientists are convinced that western grays are distinct from eastern grays (the species that whale watchers are most likely to spot from the capes and headlands of the Oregon coast). This study will help sort out that question.

“Western gray whales could be a separate population, they could represent an expansion of eastern gray whales, or there could be some of both sharing the same feeding grounds off eastern Russia,” says Greg Donovan, head of the International Whaling Commission and coordinator of the project. “It is clear that we need to re-examine our understanding of the population structure of gray whales in the North Pacific and any conservation and management implications that arise from that under- standing.”

Varvara, who travels at least 100 miles each day, headed for the Sea of Cortez, a well-known breeding ground for eastern grays, according to the researchers. She visited three lagoons there before turning back north. At the end of March, she was near Sitka, Alaska. You can follow the whale’s progress online at www. mmi.oregonstate.edu

Since its establishment in 2008, NNMREC has attracted nearly $20 million in private, state and federal support.

The NNMREC wave energy test site is about three nautical miles off Yaquina Head near Newport, Ore.

Just off the coast, not far from OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, a marine ecologist affiliated with NNMREC has been analyzing life on the seafloor. Working at depths of 60 to more than 400 feet, Sarah Henkel and a student team scoop sand and sediments to examine organisms and physical properties. They conduct beam trawls to gather bottom-dwelling fish. They use a remotely operated vehicle to survey rocky outcrops.

Henkel aims to anticipate the biological consequences of ocean wave energy on the Oregon coast. Her work complements studies of gray whale migrations conducted by OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute (MMI). In a 2007-08 survey, a team led by MMI Director Bruce Mate followed 120 whales within about 10 nautical miles of the shore. “As expected,” they reported, “the migration paths of some gray whales cross through areas of proposed wave energy development.” Studies under way focus on acoustic techniques to help whales avoid wave energy arrays if the facilities are deemed to create problems for the animals in the future.

Meanwhile, OSU engineers are testing wave energy devices and working with AXYS Technologies, Inc., of Vancouver, British Columbia, to build a new offshore moored test buoy. A search for an additional test site connected to the nation’s power grid is being led by Sean Moran, NNMREC ocean test facilities manager.

Testing the Wind

To add a new wrinkle to ocean energy, scientists are starting to investigate the potential to capture energy from sea winds. With a U.S. Department of Energy grant, Rob Suryan, a seabird expert at OSU, will lead another NNMREC project to develop remote monitoring technologies that can assess potential wind turbine impacts on seabirds and bats.

The goal is a thorough analysis of Oregon’s wave energy potential. Engineered systems will need to survive extreme ocean conditions and minimize impact on the environment and traditional ocean uses. “We’ve got the technical side, the environmental side and the outreach to communities through Oregon Sea Grant. You don’t have that everywhere,” says Belinda Batten, director of NNMREC.

Plans are to deploy the NNMREC’s test buoy in a site three nautical miles off the coast at Newport in 2012. The moored buoy will allow wave energy developers to place their devices in the ocean and monitor performance. “It can gather all the data we need about the devices: systems performance and power analysis. The developers will go out and moor alongside the buoy and connect through a cable,” says Batten, a mechanical engineer.

Companies such as Columbia Power Technologies, Neptune Wave Power and Northwest Wave Energy Innovations have been discussing plans for testing prototypes in Oregon. A fourth company, Ocean Power Technologies, has already received permits for a small commercial-scale device near Reedsport.

Research vessels in the northern Gulf of Mexico are never out of sight of the more than 4,000 active oil and gas platforms in the area. (Photo: Stephen Brandt)

Bruce Mate didn’t wait long. Within days of the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, he was on the phone with officials from the U.S. Minerals Management Service. From 2001-2004, the agency had funded him to study the Gulf’s endangered sperm whales. Now, the director of Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute had an idea: By tracking the sperm whales again, he could provide useful data to federal agencies and the well’s owner, British Petroleum, on the impact of spilled oil on the marine ecosystem.

Working through an emergency-response process known as Natural Resource Damage Assessment, Mate negotiated a contract with BP in which OSU would own the data. BP and the National Marine Fisheries Service would have access to determine damages for future settlements. By the end of May, Mate and institute staff members Craig Hayslip and Ladd Irvine were on the research ship Gordon Gunter (owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), which had been quickly re-tasked from the North Atlantic to support five spill-related science missions.

Mate wasn’t the only OSU researcher to respond as the world watched crude spew into what the Census of Marine Life has ranked as one of the globe’s most diverse marine systems. Professor Kim Anderson in the university’s Superfund Research Program marshaled a crew to track chemical contamination along the shore. At four sites from Pensacola, Florida, to Grand Isle, Louisiana, they deployed devices that essentially sniff the air and water for an oil component known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. And in September, a team led by Stephen Brandt, director of Oregon Sea Grant, conducted an acoustic survey of fish in an area northwest of the spill site.

Researchers are still analyzing data, and while images of oil-soaked pelicans, turtles and other animals are seared in the public mind, it will be a while before the broader biological significance of the spill is known.

Following the Whales

In late December, Mate was following six of the dozen whales that he had tagged in June near the damaged well. One of them was among 58 that he had tagged in the previous project. Data from that effort, he says, form a baseline, which can be used to compare whale behavior after the 2010 spill.

“I don’t expect to see sperm whales directly affected by oil,” Mate says, “but if oil or dispersants have dramatically affected the squid they eat, the secondary effect will likely influence the movements of the whales. They sort of vote with their flukes.”

A pioneer in satellite-based whale tracking, Mate says the whales that had initially traveled northeast from the well (in the direction of oil visible at the surface) had changed course and were in the western Gulf, some close to the Mexican coast. As his lab continues to monitor whale movements, researchers will use the data to analyze the size of the whales’ home ranges. They’ll also consider whether significant differences between 2010 and previous years suggest that whales avoided heavily oiled waters.

Pollutants on the Increase

While Mate was making his plans, Kim Anderson in OSU’s Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology was assembling sampling devices and personnel to track PAHs, a group of more than 100 compounds that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies as “highly potent carcinogens.”

Supported by OSU’s Environmental Health Sciences Center, Anderson and her team, including Ph.D. student Sarah Allan (see “After the Spill”), started deploying their equipment on May 9, before oil began washing ashore. As the oil slicks and tarballs hit beaches and wetlands through the summer, PAH concentrations rose to about 40 times over baseline levels, according to preliminary data.

“There are a range of health effects associated with PAHs,” says Anderson. “They are toxic by several different modes of action. We’re now using a technique that looks at the fraction of PAHs that are bioavailable — that have the potential to move into the food chain.”

Over the next two years, with support from a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grant, the lab will continue sampling in each location for more than 1,200 different compounds: PAHs, pesticides, PCBs and other industrial chemicals, many of which are known to disrupt hormone signaling.

Fish-Eye View

For Stephen Brandt, oil is only one of the threats to fish habitat in the Gulf of Mexico. At least as significant is the persistent presence of a low-oxygen region west of the Mississippi River outlet, a.k.a., the “dead zone.” As part of a multi-institution project that began in 2003, Brandt has collected data on water quality and fish behavior in order to assess the dead zone’s impact on fisheries.

A pioneer in the use of acoustics to study fish, Brandt has led five sampling expeditions to the Gulf. His September cruise, with OSU faculty research assistants Sarah Kolesar and Cynthia Sellinger, was the first after a major oil spill, but it was not the first to reflect the presence of crude. Natural oil seeps pour an estimated 41 million gallons into the Gulf every year, he points out.

During eight days of sampling, Brandt and his team saw no oil, but they did see evidence for the first time of “a very intense double-layered dead zone” with low-oxygen patches near the bottom as well as higher in the water column. The location and severity of low-oxygen zones can shift from day to day. It will take additional data analysis to identify the factors behind the 2010 pattern.

Brandt knows it will take time for the Gulf’s rich marine life to respond. In 1979, the region received a large gush of crude from Mexico’s Ixtoc 1 well, which fouled beaches and estuaries from Texas to the Yucatán Peninsula. After that event, it took three to five years for fisheries to come back, he says. Some species, he adds, may never recover.

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See the locations of Kim Anderson’s PAH sampling stations and a video of Stephen Brandt’s Nov. 8, 2010 Corvallis Science Pub presentation, Troubled Waters.

For information about supporting research and teaching through faculty endowments, contact the Oregon State University Foundation, 1-800-354-7281 or visit CampaignforOSU.org.

Mate has pioneered the tracking of whales through devices that can adhere to whales for hundreds of days, communicate with satellites and relay their locations on a daily basis (see “Tracking the Great Whales,” Terra, summer 2006). “Not a lot is known about western gray whales, so finding out where they migrate to breed and calve, so we can add some measures of protection, will be a tremendous step forward in their recovery,” says Mate.

Mate and his colleagues have created a map of Flex’s progress that is updated every Monday. As of January 31, 2011, he had surprised scientists by traveling to the eastern Pacific where he would be likely to encounter gray whales that migrate along the West Coast of North America.

The international scientific expedition was conducted through the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences and contracted through the International Whaling Commission with funding from Exxon Neftegas Ltd. and the Sakhalin Energy Investment Company.